Bill Cosby’s defense team on Friday introduced a former National Enquirer reporter to his California sexual assault trial, arguing that the reporter’s portrayal of Judy Huth’s meeting with Mr. Cosby at the Playboy Mansion strongly contradicted its own report. from Mrs Huth from the stand.
Ms. Huth testified at trial that Mr. Cosby took her hand and forced her to engage in sexual acts with him during a visit to the mansion in 1975, when she was 16.
But the reporter, Robin Mizrahi, said in a personal essay published in 2018 that Ms. Huth, identified by a pseudonym in the essay, had said in a 2005 interview that she was too afraid to touch Mr. Cosby and alone. watched as he performed a sexual act on himself.
Mr Cosby’s team brought up the discrepancy when it attempted to discredit Ms Huth’s account, arguing that she was inconsistent and too unreliable in her testimony to warrant damages in the lawsuit she filed against him. .
“This was based on what Judy told you,” Jennifer Bonjean, Mr. Cosby’s attorney, told Mrs. Mizrahi. “Judy said she was just looking.”
The cases of sexual assault against Bill Cosby
After Bill Cosby’s 2018 criminal conviction for assault was overturned, the first civil case in which he is charged with sexual misconduct has been tried.
But Ms. Mizrahi, a defense witness, said she could not vouch for the accuracy of her essay, saying she had tried to reconstruct the 2005 interview as best she could, not from contemporaneous notes of their conversation.
“I made it from memory,” she said. She said quotes she added to comments attributed to Ms Huth, identified in the passage as Debra, were included “for readability purposes.”
The essay said the meeting had taken place in the 1980s and Ms. Mizrahi admitted there were mistakes. “Clearly I didn’t get all the facts right,” she said. “I didn’t feel like that was the point of the story.”
During her performance earlier this week, Ms. Huth was asked to discuss the same quote that suggested she had described her meeting with Mr Cosby in 2005 very differently. Ms. Huth denied the accuracy of Ms. Mizrahi’s essay.
“I swear to God, on my children’s lives, that’s a lie,” she said.
Arguments over the citation came as Mr Cosby’s legal team introduced the final witnesses to the case, which is expected to go to jury for deliberation early next week.
The 12-member panel, sitting in a Santa Monica courthouse, will be asked to give its verdict based on a preponderance of the evidence. Only nine out of 12 will have to agree on a finding to reach a verdict, as opposed to the unanimity required in a criminal case.
Ms Mizrahi said she wrote the 2018 essay after leaving The Enquirer because she wanted to draw attention to Mr Cosby’s celebrity. The earlier article Ms. Mizrahi worked on in 2005, for which Ms. Huth was interviewed, was never published. Ms Mizrahi said The Enquirer canceled the article after Mr Cosby agreed to a full interview with the publication.
Ms. Huth contacted The Enquirer after reading another article about Mr Cosby questioning his conduct with a woman. When Ms. Mizrahi called her back, the former reporter testified that she asked Ms. Huth if she had any evidence to support her story.
Mrs. Huth said she had pictures of herself with Mr. Cosby at the Playboy Mansion. Two photos of Mr Cosby and Mrs Huth together were brought in as evidence during the trial.
Mr Cosby’s lawyers have suggested that Ms Huth’s phone call to The National Enquirer is evidence that she wanted to make money by selling the photos. Ms. Huth has denied that that was her motivation for coming forward.
Mrs. Mizrahi said that Mrs. Huth probably would have gotten between $7,000 and $8,000 for the photos if the 2005 article had been published. Attempts to reach the publication on Friday for comment on Ms. Mizrahi’s testimony were unsuccessful.
Earlier Friday, the defense introduced an expert witness who spoke about how memories can be tainted and also affected by other events, including media coverage. “Excessive negative media coverage is likely to label a person. That label can influence how people remember their own experiences and inflate them to make them look worse than they were,” said Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, an expert in psychology and law. “When faced with impossibilities, people often change their memories to make sense,” she added.
Another witness from Mr. Cosby, Dr. Julie Brovko, a psychologist, testified later on Friday that she had examined Ms Huth and could not link the trauma Ms Huth said she felt in 2014, when she filed her lawsuit, with her meeting with Mr. Cosby.
“She has a long history of traumatic experiences,” she said. “Those things could also be the cause of the symptoms she was experiencing at the time.”